[Anyone] SFGate: Experts warn of an accidental atomic war/Nuclear missile modified for conventional attack on Iran could set off alarm in Russia

[Erich Kuerschner]

 Another consquence of not thinking things through
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Friday, October 6, 2006 (SF Chronicle)
Experts warn of an accidental atomic war/Nuclear missile modified for conventional attack on Iran could set off alarm in Russia
Eric Rosenberg, Hearst Newspapers


   (10-06) 04:00 PDT Washington -- A Pentagon project to modify its deadliest
nuclear missile for use as a conventional weapon against targets such as
North Korea and Iran could unwittingly spark an atomic war, two weapons
experts warned Thursday.
   Russian military officers might misconstrue a submarine-launched
conventional D5 intercontinental ballistic missile and conclude that
Russia is under nuclear attack, said Ted Postol, a physicist and professor
of science, technology and national security policy at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, and Pavel Podvig, a physicist and weapons
specialist at Stanford.
   "Any launch of a long-range nonnuclear armed sea or land ballistic missile
will cause an automated alert of the Russian early warning system," Postol
told reporters.
   The triggering of an alert wouldn't necessarily precipitate a retaliatory
hail of Russian nuclear missiles, Postol said. Nevertheless, he said,
"there can be no doubt that such an alert will greatly increase the
chances of a nuclear accident involving strategic nuclear forces."
   Podvig said launching conventional versions of a missile from a submarine
that normally carries nuclear ICBMs "expands the possibility for a
misunderstanding so widely that it is hard to contemplate."
   Mixing conventional and nuclear D5s on a U.S. Trident submarine "would be
very dangerous," Podvig said, because the Russians have no way of
discriminating between the two types of missiles once they are launched.
   Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that the project would increase
the danger of accidental nuclear war.
   "The media and expert circles are already discussing plans to use
intercontinental ballistic missiles to carry nonnuclear warheads," he said
in May. "The launch of such a missile could ... provoke a full-scale
counterattack using strategic nuclear forces."
   Accidental nuclear war is not so far-fetched. In 1995, Russia initially
interpreted the launch of a Norwegian scientific rocket as the onset of a
U.S. nuclear attack. Then-President Boris Yeltsin activated his "nuclear
briefcase" in the first stages of preparation to launch a retaliatory
strike before the mistake was discovered.
   The United States and Russia have acknowledged the possibility that
Russia's equipment might mistakenly conclude the United States was
attacking with nuclear missiles.
   In 1998, the two countries agreed to set up a joint radar center in Moscow
operated by U.S. and Russian forces to supplement Russia's aging equipment
and reduce the threat of accidental war. But the center has yet to open.
   A major technical problem exacerbates the risk of using the D5 as a
conventional weapon: the decaying state of Russia's nuclear forces.
Russia's nuclear missiles are tethered to early warning radars that have
been in decline since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. And
Russia, unlike the United States, lacks sufficient satellites to
supplement the radars and confirm whether missile launches are truly under
way or are false alarms.
   The scenario that worries Postol, Podvig and other weapons experts is what
might happen if the United States and North Korea come to blows and a
conventional D5 is launched against a target there from a submerged
Trident submarine. Depending on the sub's location, the flying time to
Russia could be under 15 minutes so the Russians would have little time to
confirm the trajectory -- using decaying equipment -- before deciding to
launch a nuclear strike on the United States.
   The D5 missile project involves the removal of nuclear warheads from as
many as two dozen D5 ICBMs that are carried aboard the U.S. fleet of 12
Ohio-class Trident submarines.
   The Pentagon has the project on an accelerated schedule, with the goal of
fielding the weapons alongside their nuclear variants in two years. Each
Trident submarine carries 24 D5 missiles, and the plan calls for using two
of those as conventional weapons in each sub.
   The rocket fired by a submerged submarine would barrel up through the
ocean powered by its three-stage engine and rapidly ascend through the
atmosphere at speeds up to 20,000 feet per second into outer space.
   The warhead compartment of the missile would then plummet back to earth,
guided to its target within about 50 feet by sophisticated sensors.
Defense officials believe it would gain enough speed and force to
penetrate underground command bunkers. ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2006 SF Chronicle